Breadcrumbs

Category: Student

Calling all postgrads!

Imperial College London would like to recruit a postgraduate student representative for the NEW Science, Engineering and Technology Research Ethics Committee (SETREC). SETREC will focus on non-health related projects and will run alongside the ICREC which previously had oversight for all health and non-health studies.

A key aim of the Committee is to enable Imperial to maintain the highest ethical standards in all research relating to human participants.

SETREC will convene monthly on the third Tuesday of each month at South Kensington Campus. If you are interested in joining the Committee, please send a short letter outlining relevant experience and suitability. Please include an up to date copy of your CV.

No experience necessary. Applications must be sent to Nooreen Shaikh at the Joint Research Compliance Office. Information on ICREC can be found on the website.

Dallas Alexandrou, project manager for the Attributes and Aspirations module explains this new module:

In parallel to the ongoing curriculum review, the Faculty of Medicine postgraduate team has identified the need to develop high-quality tools and activities to help our Master’s students take ownership of their professional futures and develop their graduate attributes beyond the mastery of their chosen discipline.

As a result, the proposed Attributes and Aspirations (AA) module has been approved by the College Pedagogy Transformation Committee and is currently being developed. It will use interactive pedagogical activities based on a blended, inclusive, innovative and active approach to supporting our students.

Critical to the development of the AA module is that it meets both students’ and employers’ needs. Research has been undertaken to identify the relevant topics and skills our students are keen to develop, together with the skills and attributes identified by employers as being critical graduate skills for current and future employment. Areas including effective career guidance, practice of selection processes and skills such as adaptability, communication, critical thinking, problem solving and effective team work have been identified as priorities.

Subject to the College’s standard approval mechanisms, a pilot delivery of the AA module will commence from Autumn Term 2019-20 in selected Faculty of Medicine MSc/MRes programmes. AA will be non-credit bearing and elective, with much of the delivery online to avoid interfering with students’ timetabled teaching and lab sessions. Following evaluation of the pilot, there is an ambition to offer the module to students from all FoM postgraduate programmes and to students from Faculties across the College. (more…)

A new Imperial blog entitled ‘NeurOn Topic: Learning and Teaching’ has launched this week.

The key aims of this new blog are to enhance the curriculum, innovate pedagogy and inspire society.

With questions submitted by current Master’s students, the first blog post features an interview with Dr Magdalena Skipper, former Imperial alumna and new Editor-in-Chief of Nature. She is the first female Editor-in-Chief over the last 149 years and started her new role at the beginning of July.

Some of the topics that will be covered in future blog posts include the relationship between brain science and spirituality, the neuroscience behind the ‘perfect’ morning cup of coffee, and the neuroscience of revision. There will be also space for notes on the cognitive changes in depression and on the neurological aspect of HIV, as well as on the important role the anterior part of our brain plays in learning and cognition.

Furthermore, other interviews with special guests have already been planned.

In 2016, the School of Medicine collaborated with the ICSM Students’ Union and charity Community Action Nepal, to produce ‘Imperial College Enables’, giving students the opportunity to experience healthcare systems entirely different to that of the UK.

The project grew in 2017, and from the work the students did on their visit to Nepal came a relationship with the charity Days for Girls, which supports young women around the world by distributing female hygiene kits and education materials about menstruation.

Many women in rural Nepal struggle to manage their periods, some using rags and many forced to stay indoors for the duration, and the level of education about menstruation is low.

During the students’ visit, word spread quickly between the rural communities, and many women walked many miles to a health post to collect a hygiene kit. The students soon ran out of the kits, which are colourful bags containing washable sanitary pads and underwear.

Each kit can last up to three years, and costs just £5.14 to produce. The kits are also sewn and put together in Nepal, offering the extra benefit of employment for local people.

In May 2018, students will return to the Nepalese health posts previously visited, as part of a new second-year MBBS module, Clinical Research and Innovation. The aim is to prepare these students with 1033 hygiene kits – the number of female students currently in the School of Medicine.

What is IMPLEMnT?

Last year James Moss and I (Katie Stripe) of the National Heart and Lung Institute (NHLI) and Alexandra ‘Chippy’ Compton, medical student and ICU president, received a grant from the Excellence Fund in Learning and Teaching Innovation to develop a tool that will help educators navigate their way through today’s technology-saturated world in order to more effectively use digital methods in their teaching. Ultimately we hope to create a tool that will help anyone in a teaching role, be that a lecturer, a doctor teaching at the bedside, a lab demonstrator, or any one of the huge variety of educators we have in the faculty and across college, to make informed decisions about which technologies are most appropriate for the type of teaching they are providing. There are many sites listing the myriad technologies that can be used in learning but none, so far, that have combined that information with teaching methodology to give practical advice on what to use and when.

Embarking on this project we rather naively thought it would be simple to curate a list of technologies and teaching methodologies then join them together. We were wrong, very wrong! Once we began looking at the technology used in teaching it became clear that there an overwhelming number so we hope to make this into a college-wide community project by asking colleagues and student partners which technologies they use and how. We can then build a bank of technologies that grows dynamically as technology develops but is also relevant to our teaching community.

We have already constructed a framework at implemntproject.com where we have so far compiled a small number of technologies, however, we have a list of over 300 more unfinished plus the thousands that we have not yet encountered. Since IMPLEMnT aims to be a tool that works for people from across college it seems fitting that those teachers should be able to contribute. If you have ideas or suggestions you can contact us through the site, via twitter @implemntproject or you can join us for a mass online co-authoring session on 25 April at 12pm. This event will have two face-to-face sessions running at the South Kensington campus where staff can come together and contribute technologies, methodologies and case studies via post-it notes, marker pens and other more traditional means, and running alongside this there will be several online rooms which you can drop in and out of depending on experience and interest: (more…)

Calling all postgrads!

Imperial College London would like to recruit a PG Student Representative for the Imperial College Research Ethics Committee (ICREC). Imperial College Research Ethics Committee was set up in order to meet requirements from external research funders for ethical review of proposals, which are not within the remit of NHS Research Ethics Committees.

A key aim of the Committee is to enable Imperial College to maintain the highest ethical standards in all research relating to human subjects. ICREC normally convenes 6 times during each academic year, on a bi-monthly basis. The meetings normally take place on the second Tuesday of each month at our South Kensington Campus.

If you are interested in joining the Committee, please send a short letter outlining relevant experience and suitability. (more…)

Over the summer months, three lecture theatres in the Lab Block at the Charing Cross campus underwent extensive refurbishment. The changes are in line with the College’s Learning and Teaching Strategy, and the spaces have been redesigned to facilitate different, more effective teaching methods, and better accommodating small group teaching.

While the 10th floor space remains in a tiered, theatre structure, it has been fully redecorated and includes new seating and brighter lighting.

Imperial College Speakers Toastmasters Club is a student-run club to help Imperial students improve their public speaking and communication skills in a friendly and supportive environment. At every meeting, students have the opportunity to give speeches on a variety of topics, practice impromptu speaking, offer constructive and detailed feedback to each other, and socialize with a diverse group of people from across the Imperial College community. Each meeting provides a valuable opportunity for students to hone the public speaking skills that are essential to effective lab meetings, conferences, class presentations, and other professional events.

Our club serves undergraduate and postgraduate students from all backgrounds. We recognise that students, especially those in the STEM subjects, are eager to find a welcoming venue to practice their speaking skills. We would also like to increase our diversity and reach out to students who would benefit from this club. Our club essentially provides the same service as professional public speaking coaching, but at a membership fee that is a fraction of the typical price of coaching. (more…)